The Stolen Bacillus and Other Incidents
vast multitude of people. Then the gentleman who was not Bill got his
knee below Mr Watkins' diaphragm, and tried to curl him up upon it.
When his sensations became less entangled he was sitting upon the
turf, and eight or ten men--the night was dark, and he was rather too
confused to count--standing round him, apparently waiting for him
to recover. He mournfully assumed that he was captured, and would
probably have made some philosophical reflections on the fickleness of
fortune, had not his internal sensations disinclined him for speech.
He noticed very quickly that his wrists were not handcuffed, and then
a flask of brandy was put in his hands. This touched him a little--it
was such unexpected kindness.
"He's a-comin' round," said a voice which he fancied he recognised as
belonging to the Hammerpond second footman.
"We've got 'em, sir, both of 'em," said the Hammerpond butler, the man
who had handed him the flask. "Thanks to _you_."
No one answered this remark. Yet he failed to see how it applied to
him.
"He's fair dazed," said a strange voice; "the villains half-murdered
him."
Mr Teddy Watkins decided to remain fair dazed until he had a better
grasp of the situation. He perceived that two of the black figures
round him stood side-by-side with a dejected air, and there was
something in the carriage of their shoulders that suggested to his
experienced eye hands that were bound together. Two! In a flash
he rose to his position. He emptied the little flask and
staggered--obsequious hands assisting him--to his feet. There was a
sympathetic murmur.
"Shake hands, sir, shake hands," said one of the figures near him.
"Permit me to introduce myself. I am very greatly indebted to you.
It was the jewels of my wife, Lady Aveling, which attracted these
scoundrels to the house."
"Very glad to make your lordship's acquaintance," said Teddy Watkins.
"I presume you saw the rascals making for the shrubbery, and dropped
down on them?"
"That's exactly how it happened," said Mr Watkins.
"You should have waited till they got in at the window," said Lord
Aveling; "they would get it hotter if they had actually committed the
burglary. And it was lucky for you two of the policemen were out by
the gates, and followed up the three of you. I doubt if you could have
secured the two of them--though it was confoundedly plucky of you, all
the same."
"Yes, I ought to have thought of all that," said Mr Watkins; "but one
can't think of everythink."
"Certainly not," said Lord Aveling. "I am afraid they have mauled you
a little," he added. The party was now moving towards the house. "You
walk rather lame. May I offer you my arm?"
And instead of entering Hammerpond House by the dressing-room window,
Mr Watkins entered it--slightly intoxicated, and inclined now to
cheerfulness again--on the arm of a real live peer, and by the
front door. "This," thought Mr Watkins, "is burgling in style!" The
"scoundrels," seen by the gaslight, proved to be mere local amateurs
unknown to Mr Watkins, and they were taken down into the pantry and
there watched over by the three policemen, two gamekeepers with loaded
guns, the butler, an ostler, and a carman, until the dawn allowed of
their removal to Hazelhurst police-station. Mr Watkins was made much
of in the saloon. They devoted a sofa to him, and would not hear of
a return to the village that night. Lady Aveling was sure he was
brilliantly original, and said her idea of Turner was just such
another rough, half-inebriated, deep-eyed, brave, and clever man. Some
one brought up a remarkable little folding-ladder that had been picked
up in the shrubbery, and showed him how it was put together. They also
described how wires had been found in the shrubbery, evidently placed
there to trip-up unwary pursuers. It was lucky he had escaped these
snares. And they showed him the jewels.
Mr Watkins had the sense not to talk too much, and in any
conversational difficulty fell back on his internal pains. At last he
was seized with stiffness in the back, and yawning. Everyone suddenly
awoke to the fact that it was a shame to keep him talking after his
affray, so he retired early to his room, the little red room next to
Lord Aveling's suite.
The dawn found a deserted easel bearing a canvas with a green
inscription, in the Hammerpond Park, and it found Hammerpond House
in commotion. But if the dawn found Mr Teddy Watkins and the Aveling
diamonds, it did not communicate the information to the police.
A MOTH--GENUS NOVO
Probably you have heard of Hapley--not W.T. Hapley, the son, but the
celebrated Hapley, the Hapley of _Periplaneta Hapliia_, Hapley the
entomologist. If so you know at least of the great feud between Hapley
and Professor Pawkins. Though certain of its consequences may be
new to you. For those who have not, a word or two of explanation is
necessary, which the idle reader may go over with a glancing eye, if
his indolence so incline him.
It is amazing how very widely diffused is the ignorance of such really
important matters as this Hapley-Pawkins feud. Those epoch-making
controversies, again, that have convulsed the Geological Society, are,
I verily believe, almost entirely unknown outside the fellowship of
that body. I have heard men of fair general education even refer to
the great scenes at these meetings as vestry-meeting squabbles. Yet
the great Hate of the English and Scotch geologists has lasted now
half a century, and has "left deep and abundant marks upon the body of
the science." And this Hapley-Pawkins business, though perhaps a more
personal affair, stirred passions as profound, if not profounder. Your
common man has no conception of the zeal that animates a scientific
investigator, the fury of contradiction you can arouse in him. It is
the _odium theologicum_ in a new form. There are men, for instance,
who would gladly burn Professor Ray Lankester at Smithfield for
his treatment of the Mollusca in the Encyclopaedia. That fantastic
extension of the Cephalopods to cover the Pteropods ... But I wander
from Hapley and Pawkins.
It began years and years ago, with a revision of the Microlepidoptera
(whatever these may be) by Pawkins, in which he extinguished a new
species created by Hapley. Hapley, who was always quarrelsome, replied
by a stinging impeachment of the entire classification of Pawkins[A].
Pawkins, in his "Rejoinder[B]," suggested that Hapley's microscope
was as defective as his powers of observation, and called him an
"irresponsible meddler"--Hapley was not a professor at that time.
Hapley, in his retort[C], spoke of "blundering collectors," and
described, as if inadvertently, Pawkins' revision as a "miracle of
ineptitude." It was war to the knife. However, it would scarcely
interest the reader to detail how these two great men quarrelled, and
how the split between them widened until from the Microlepidoptera
they were at war upon every open question in entomology. There were
memorable occasions. At times the Royal Entomological Society meetings
resembled nothing so much as the Chamber of Deputies. On the whole, I
fancy Pawkins was nearer the truth than Hapley. But Hapley was skilful
with his rhetoric, had a turn for ridicule rare in a scientific man,
was endowed with vast energy, and had a fine sense of injury in the
matter of the extinguished species; while Pawkins was a man of dull
presence, prosy of speech, in shape not unlike a water-barrel,
over-conscientious with testimonials, and suspected of jobbing museum
appointments. So the young men gathered round Hapley and applauded
him. It was a long struggle, vicious from the beginning, and growing
at last to pitiless antagonism. The successive turns of fortune, now
an advantage to one side and now to another--now Hapley tormented by
some success of Pawkins, and now Pawkins outshone by Hapley, belong
rather to the history of entomology than to this story.
[Footnote A: "Remarks on a Recent Revision of Microlepidoptera."
_Quart. Journ. Entomological Soc_. 1863.]
[Footnote B: "Rejoinder to certain Remarks," &c. _Ibid_. 1864.]
[Footnote C: "Further Remarks," &c. _Ibid_.]
But in 1891 Pawkins, whose health had been bad for some time,
published some work upon the "mesoblast" of the Death's Head Moth.
What the mesoblast of the Death's Head Moth may be, does not matter a
rap in this story. But the work was far below his usual standard, and
gave Hapley an opening he had coveted for years. He must have worked
night and day to make the most of his advantage.
In an elaborate critique he rent Pawkins to tatters--one can fancy the
man's disordered black hair, and his queer dark eyes flashing as
he went for his antagonist--and Pawkins made a reply, halting,
ineffectual, with painful gaps of silence, and yet malignant. There
was no mistaking his will to wound Hapley, nor his incapacity to
do it. But few of those who heard him--I was absent from that
meeting--realised how ill the man was.
Hapley had got his opponent down, and meant to finish him. He followed
with a simply brutal attack upon Pawkins, in the form of a paper upon
the development of moths in general, a paper showing evidence of a
most extraordinary amount of mental labour, and yet couched in a
violently controversial tone. Violent as it was, an editorial note
witnesses that it was modified. It must have covered Pawkins with
shame and confusion of face. It left no loophole; it was murderous in
argument, and utterly contemptuous in tone; an awful thing for the
declining years of a man's career.
The world of entomologists waited breathlessly for the rejoinder from
Pawkins. He would try one, for Pawkins had always been game. But when
it came it surprised them. For the rejoinder of Pawkins was to catch
the influenza, to proceed to pneumonia, and to die.
It was perhaps as effectual a reply as he could make under the
circumstances, and largely turned the current of feeling against
Hapley. The very people who had most gleefully cheered on those
gladiators became serious at the consequence. There could be no
reasonable doubt the fret of the defeat had contributed to the death
of Pawkins. There was a limit even to scientific controversy, said
serious people. Another crushing attack was already in the press and
appeared on the day before the funeral. I don't think Hapley exerted
himself to stop it. People remembered how Hapley had hounded down his
rival, and forgot that rival's defects. Scathing satire reads ill over
fresh mould. The thing provoked comment in the daily papers. This it
was that made me think that you had probably heard of Hapley and this
controversy. But, as I have already remarked, scientific workers live
very much in a world of their own; half the people, I dare say, who go
along Piccadilly to the Academy every year, could not tell you where
the learned societies abide. Many even think that Research is a kind
of happy-family cage in which all kinds of men lie down together in
peace.
In his private thoughts Hapley could not forgive Pawkins for dying.
In the first place, it was a mean dodge to escape the absolute
pulverisation Hapley had in hand for him, and in the second, it left
Hapley's mind with a queer gap in it. For twenty years he had worked
hard, sometimes far into the night, and seven days a week, with
microscope, scalpel, collecting-net, and pen, and almost entirely with
reference to Pawkins. The European reputation he had won had come as
an incident in that great antipathy. He had gradually worked up to a
climax in this last controversy. It had killed Pawkins, but it had
also thrown Hapley out of gear, so to speak, and his doctor advised
him to give up work for a time, and rest. So Hapley went down into a
quiet village in Kent, and thought day and night of Pawkins, and good